


The indelible stain of you within me

by NRGburst



Category: This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29420595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NRGburst/pseuds/NRGburst
Summary: A missing chapter/letter
Relationships: Blue/Red (This is How You Lose the Time War)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	The indelible stain of you within me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingstoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingstoken/gifts).



> Dear kingstoken,
> 
> Your prompt was both dare and delight – and therefore irresistible. <3

Festivals are the best kind of flourishing chaos: independent lives working in myriad ways toward a common purpose. She takes in excited chatter and the distant thump of drums; the air redolent with the scent of steamed buns and fried meats and incense.

This culture marks happiness and prosperity with the color red - in their silk garments and slippers; in the bright paper affixed to walls and doors; even the paint on the pillars holding up their pavilions. She's here to ensure the inspiration of a poet, whose words will bolster hearts and minds, tipping the invention of gunpowder from necessity to uncertainty in this thread.

Ink and ideas over sword – she likes that the innocuous and intangible can hold such power.

Even over her.

This color also harbors a secret delight for her now; one that makes her smile when she dabs it on as a cosmetic, and look twice when she glimpses it unexpectedly.

Still, it pleases her to see so much of it, though she doesn't really expect to spy who she longs to see.

She still inhales with delight when she spots a painted blue X where it shouldn't be.

Other festival goers walk past and over it, unknowing, unseeing, while anticipation grows within her like a wave.

She takes her position obediently to claim her treasure, eyes predator sharp and bright.

It isn't long - the square fills with dancers and they hurry to their places and wait, poised, as the musicians also shift and ready their instruments. When the music begins, fans are snapped open with expert flicks of a hundred wrists.

And the message is revealed as they're waved and turned and partially shut in sequence, in a language that won't exist until far downthread.

She lets out a laugh of pure delight when the post-script comes hurrying out upon the ribbons of a dancer who scurries, harried, into position.

Oh, the delivery of this one will be one to cherish.

* * *

My Darling Blue,

You should try the honeycakes – they really are sublime. Perhaps not as perfectly enriching as your Garden variety (haha), but their texture and sweetness are satisfyingly sticky and aromatic. Think of me as you eat one, and know that I thought of you the same way: savoring every morsel and licking my fingers after.

I wonder: is hunger a kind of longing? Are they separate concepts or differing shades of one? To me hunger has a flavor of need to it; a grotesquely primal drive our Agency uncoupled us from eons ago, for good reasons. Longing, meanwhile, is more ephemerally wishy-washy, and yet there is a constancy to it that hunger lacks.

Take the feeling when I uncover one of your missives; that ache to consume it immediately; thoroughly, completely. What is that, if not hunger?

And yet there is never satisfaction, is there, my cyanic sweet? Even with your words like fresh ink, not even dry yet upon my consciousness, I always hope for more.

A positive feedback loop _should_ result in infinity. And yet I suspect that the true answer to this is simply _one_.

I'm not sure if this is a paradox fit for your philosophers or our algorithms. But don't stop writing.

Yours always,

Red

PS. We're still going to win, of course.


End file.
